Analysis of power and ground islands in printed circuit boards

Power and ground islands (in the following also referred to as partial or segmented power planes) are often used in printed circuit boards to reduce and control noise propagation. Good isolation can be obtained by the gap between the ´copper´ islands, but the amount of isolation also depends on the type of connection between these partial planes and the components on the board. The paper addresses the performance of segmented power planes with respect to the type of connection used, providing simulated and experimental results. Also, a circuit model (implemented in Matlab) to analyze generic split planes is presented. A comparison between the circuit model results, measurements and simulations carried out by commercial field solvers (FEM and FIT) are given.